VC/PMS/AOI Q&A - Ask your story & art questions here!

Meet 5 hungry vampires who sure know how to show their school spirit...and the wacky crew of monster hunters out to get them!

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Tython
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Re: VC/PMS/AOI Q&A - Ask your story & art questions here!

Post by Tython »

I am using Chrome

X3N0-Life-Form
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Re: VC/PMS/AOI Q&A - Ask your story & art questions here!

Post by X3N0-Life-Form »

I've been seeing this as well for some time over various pixie trix comics pages using firefox.

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vampire hunter D
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Re: VC/PMS/AOI Q&A - Ask your story & art questions here!

Post by vampire hunter D »

I've heard people complaining of seeing it coming from other sites too, not the least of which is TVTropes. It would seem some jerkass infected the ads again.
Pointless arguing is one of the three pillars upon which the Internet is built. The other two are of course cat pictures and porn.

Random Wanderer
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[27-08-2014] America Unearthed

Post by Random Wanderer »

Again alot of these plot points would have made more sense if we didn't lose a book since this is technically book 5.
"No guys, the story's good, we just skipped a bunch of the plot" is not a convincing argument.

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Re: [27-08-2014] America Unearthed

Post by Adam_Arnold »

Random Wanderer wrote:
Again alot of these plot points would have made more sense if we didn't lose a book since this is technically book 5.
"No guys, the story's good, we just skipped a bunch of the plot" is not a convincing argument.
We had to find a way to give the book a fresh place to start so it could keep/gain readers instead of continuing to lose them. Half wanted Vampire Cheerleaders and half wanted Paranormal Mystery Squad, and it was resulting in obnoxiously vicious flame wars which were just resulting in us losing even more readers in the wake.

In order for the series to continue at all, we had to find a fresh starting place. As for which cast would lead the series... I split the difference. Readers liked Leonard, so I paired him with one character from Vampire Cheerleaders and one character from Paranormal Mystery Squad and just shifted ahead to the next school year.

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Re: [27-08-2014] America Unearthed

Post by GethN7 »

Adam Arnold wrote:
Random Wanderer wrote:
Again alot of these plot points would have made more sense if we didn't lose a book since this is technically book 5.
"No guys, the story's good, we just skipped a bunch of the plot" is not a convincing argument.
We had to find a way to give the book a fresh place to start so it could keep/gain readers instead of continuing to lose them. Half wanted Vampire Cheerleaders and half wanted Paranormal Mystery Squad, and it was resulting in obnoxiously vicious flame wars which were just resulting in us losing even more readers in the wake.

In order for the series to continue at all, we had to find a fresh starting place. As for which cast would lead the series... I split the difference. Readers liked Leonard, so I paired him with one character from Vampire Cheerleaders and one character from Paranormal Mystery Squad and just shifted ahead to the next school year.
That makes a lot of sense, and since Katie and Suki make a nice opposing pair with Leonard as the straight man of the bunch, they do make an interesting trio.

Random Wanderer
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[27-08-2014] America Unearthed

Post by Random Wanderer »

...In an attempt to please the most people you've ended up losing my interest almost entirely. But I can recognize the issues you're talking about. I can't necessarily say you made the best choices, but then I wasn't the one who faced the responsibility of making them: who can say for sure what I would have done in that situation.

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timeline
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Re: [27-08-2014] America Unearthed

Post by timeline »

Leonard has been useless. I would have like it better as a dirty pair without him frankly. Katie just seems like most teens though I would like her to grow. Suki is just always cool to the max.

Main issue I have with the comic is it just jumps too much. Lori back-story is something I really wanted. Hell 70's Lori's in back to the future is a comic in its own. Katie wanting to call her parents... :(

Dam it Adam relax and play out a story. Hell Suki getting chased for internment in ww2 would have been great.

Ohh what if Katie's mom went to the same school as Lori in the 70's and Lori wants her to be a VC. If Lori turns mom she would still be ok today but no children.. Can you condemn your mother?

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Re: [27-08-2014] America Unearthed

Post by Adam_Arnold »

timeline wrote:Dam it Adam relax and play out a story.
I can't, though. The page count was only supposed to be 150...and we're going well over that just to wrap the story and series up.

The out of control time jumps have allowed us to present and directly interact with parts of the series timeline we couldn't otherwise have gotten to see in any other form than a flashback. And it all segues right into the finale.

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Hurbster
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[27-08-2014] America Unearthed

Post by Hurbster »

Adam Arnold wrote:
Random Wanderer wrote:
Again alot of these plot points would have made more sense if we didn't lose a book since this is technically book 5.
"No guys, the story's good, we just skipped a bunch of the plot" is not a convincing argument.
We had to find a way to give the book a fresh place to start so it could keep/gain readers instead of continuing to lose them. Half wanted Vampire Cheerleaders and half wanted Paranormal Mystery Squad, and it was resulting in obnoxiously vicious flame wars which were just resulting in us losing even more readers in the wake.

In order for the series to continue at all, we had to find a fresh starting place. As for which cast would lead the series... I split the difference. Readers liked Leonard, so I paired him with one character from Vampire Cheerleaders and one character from Paranormal Mystery Squad and just shifted ahead to the next school year.

What was your reasoning for joining the two comics in the first place ? I can't be the only one who was pretty disappointed when you squished them together - certainly to the detriment of the Paranormal Mystery Squad, which had so much more scope for stories than those vampires. Then you gave us that extra stuff with Heather...
"We're only immortal for a limited time. " - Dreamline.

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Re: [27-08-2014] America Unearthed

Post by Adam_Arnold »

Hurbster wrote:What was your reasoning for joining the two comics in the first place ? I can't be the only one who was pretty disappointed when you squished them together - certainly to the detriment of the Paranormal Mystery Squad, which had so much more scope for stories than those vampires. Then you gave us that extra stuff with Heather...
The plan was to always have the Vampire Cheerleaders and Paranormal Mystery Squad casts crossover in the third story arc, if we ever got to it. That was a given and why we seeded appearances by the casts into the stories from the beginning. The "Vampire Cheerleaders Must Die!" story was intended (and written) to be a Paranormal Mystery Squad one and was going to run on PMS's website. Vampire Cheerleaders was going to be turned into "Vampire Cheerleaders Presents" with Lori Thurston as a Cheerleader Camp Councilor in a Vampyra-type "horror host" role with the first story being "Frankenbitches" and a later one being "Hoes From Hell."

There were two problems:
1) It cost too much to have two different series running with two different production teams. At that point, we didn't have enough ad revenue, so we still had to rely on print and ebook sales to at least break even on the production costs.
2) Vampire Cheerleaders' website was getting 3000 more hits than the PMS site was at the time. (Fun fact: Shiei was originally meant to be the artist on both VC and PMS, but production delays resulted in Comipa and Ian taking over PMS. Had that not happened, it likely would've been better received.)

When the decision was made to merge the two series together, "Vampire Cheerleaders Presents" was shelved, but the "Vampire Cheerleaders Must Die!" script was already completely written. So that entire PMS-centric story stayed largely untouched... except the ending, which was revised to be about Leonard.

The story arcs that were in the planning stages to come after "Vampire Cheerleaders Must Die!" would've had a mix of the two casts interacting together.

But yes, Paranormal Mystery Squad was always intended to have the "macro" story that tied all the various other parts together.

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Re: [27-08-2014] America Unearthed

Post by Storm-forge mystique »

Was it always meant that Marcy should turn out to have been from the start a moustache-twirling Illuminata?

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Re: [27-08-2014] America Unearthed

Post by Adam_Arnold »

Storm-forge mystique wrote:Was it always meant that Marcy should turn out to have been from the start a moustache-twirling Illuminata?
Marcy was going to be revealed to be someone who has one serious case of Stockholm Syndrome.

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Re: VC/PMS/AOI Q&A - Ask your story & art questions here!

Post by Adam_Arnold »

Merged a couple of Q&A topics from another thread:
viewtopic.php?f=72&t=2383&p=524058#p524058

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Re: VC/PMS/AOI Q&A - Ask your story & art questions here!

Post by JoybuzzerX »

Awwww...wish I had read this thread before. I didn't realize VC was going to end. :(

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